


The Song of Youth

by Allegory



Category: Assassin's Creed
Genre: 12 y.o to be exact, AC Syndicate, Cutting, F/M, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Light Angst, Sibling Relationship, bestie twins, ish, jacob angsty, young frye twins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-23
Updated: 2016-08-23
Packaged: 2018-08-10 13:41:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7847263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Allegory/pseuds/Allegory
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Dear sister,” he sings, a little blue bird, a little jay. His lips are curled into a cruel smile but there’s an apology, somewhere along the contortion of his pasty skin. “What brings you here?”</p><p>Evie wants to slap the bitch. This is not an uncommon urge.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Song of Youth

Evie isn’t the best sister out there.

She remembers this as she perches on the edge of a garbed roof, eyes trailing Jacob’s figure. Another dirty task to complete. These days Evie leaves him to it while she watches for trouble, spaces out. There are horrible things that Evie let pass during their younger days, and when Jacob is out on the road like this, all choke holds and slicing blades, it inevitably comes back to her, the light that had once burned in Jacob’s eyes, now cold and trampled strips of fabric.

*

The tension in the air is like a drawn bow, eager to snap at any moment. Evie stands straight in the backyard, gazing at Jacob who is sprawled on the ground in front of her, one arm across his eyes. You see, it’s not hard when assassins are expected to conceal every flash of skin. Jacob doesn’t need extra precautions. He just needs this; a lot of indifference, and indignance to losing.

Their father is not happy with this. Ethan Frye strides out from under a tree and pulls Jacob up. He has a sullen look on his face, gaunt cheeks and hollow eyes, skin stretched too thin around his skull. Evie finds it hard to believe that, once, he had been someone else. Someone who cared enough to get back on his feet and wrestle Evie, knowing that he’d lost one match but _it’s not over,_ there are a thousand matches they have not fought. It’s as if each blow that Evie tosses his way are telling him that they’re not twelve and still green, still training and _God, it’s all right to fail for now, Jacob, it really is._

But it isn’t. Not for their father. Evie is dismissed for lunch. Jacob lingers at his father’s side, eyes downcast. It’s like a perpetual storm cloud around him, and though Evie has yet fallen victim to his lightning, she has seen it being cast, at the country bumpkins they played with, at their father, when the mood for riposte strikes him.

Evie runs up the stairs of their home. She crouches under a window and listens to their voices, muffled by the wind. Ethan is not pulling his punches. _You’re not even trying, Jacob. You think this is fun and games? When you get out on the field, you think your target will just stare at you and walk away?_ And all Jacob can bother to say, after a moment of silence, is _no._ Evie can envisage her father’s scowl. There’s no slapping or punching; Ethan reserves that strictly for training, when it’s clear things aren’t personal. But she can almost feel how close he is to breaking that pact, to enforce some physical discipline. _Two laps. Go._ And it’s dusk when Jacob comes back, sweating profusely, but not profusely enough that he’d completed two circuits around the countryside.

Dinner is a somber affair that night. Jacob doesn’t touch his food. He hasn’t for a while now. When the torturous half hour is over, Evie heads into her room and stares at the empty space adjacent to her bed, wondering why Jacob had requested to move to the spare room two week ago, why she hadn’t reprimanded him. One soul in two bodies, the Frye twins. A little cut-out piece of their mother tethers on the border between the two bodies, like a plate of fine china rolling on its rim, propelling on momentum, momentum only. It’s hard. Evie wishes it isn’t like this, the silent remorse their father must bear, his desperation to save Jacob in the cruelest ways possible. Cruelty, after all, is assassins have ever known.

Evie doesn’t make the cut. She’s not assassin enough, yet, to treat her brother the same way. Evie closes her eyes and envisions what she would see on his flash of skin and the memory retakes her, distant or clear, she can’t fathom. _It’s just a little nick._ Jacob’s fingers pierced with red clefts, Evie ripping the fabric of her shirt and pressing it against his palm. It was stupid of her. They have hurt themselves far worse during training, broken bones and sheared skin, wiggly teeth, garish bruises. Their father knows. Probably. Evie has heard him calling Jacob into his room a few days after the incident, though they both exited impassively. Jacob still has the gloves fitted on his hands. But the blades have been missing.

Evie digs the heels of her palms into her eyes and thinks about everything that has happened the past month, or rather the lack of them. Jacob’s just…changed. Sometimes the birds sing without reason. Sometimes people are killed without reason. But Evie still feels responsible, and she doesn’t want to look back and realize that her lack of concern had been the reason. Evie gets up and makes her way to Jacob’s room, unsure of what she would say, sure she had to say it.

But Jacob’s not in his room.

The panic builds up slowly in her chest, a distant humming in her brain, _hey buddy, you should probably feel fucked up right now,_ that fills like water behind a dam, a snail’s luxuriating pace, then as she remembers Jacob never leaves the house without telling her, the fine china comes crashing down, his side, her side, it doesn’t even matter. Evie just knows from the knitting in her chest, wounds stitched, bloating, bloating, imploding.

Evie has to make a dash for her father’s room, put her hands on the doorknob and twist before she realizes, yeah, tonight he’s left for a meeting across town. Swearing ungainly under her breath, Evie bursts out of the cottage’s front door and tears through the night, faster than the bald eagle crowing overhead.

Jacob.

Tears and sweat mingle, blurring her vision. She has stood too far away from this problem for far too long. It was just a little nick.

Evie has no idea where she’s going. Only that her feet are carrying her, the heavy brick of her mind weighing them down. She doesn’t know anything about Jacob. The places he used to hang out, the tavern, the meadow, the lake, he’s not anywhere. The night has whisked her twin away and she needs him back desperately, this very moment.

Her feet have hauled her onto a cliff, the idyllic view of the town a forgotten image, one that she and Jacob used to share when their father went on his trips. Evie’s heart skips two beats and one more when Jacob appears out from the foliage, arms crossed, staring at her with some kind of amused glint in his eyes. The nerve of him, to seem the slightest bit mirthful at her terror. Yet it’s a sort of appropriate—a _uthentic—_ for Jacob Frye.

“Dear sister,” he sings, a little blue bird, a little jay. His lips are curled into a cruel smile but there’s an apology, somewhere along the contortion of his pasty skin. “What brings you here?”

Evie wants to slap the bitch. This is not an uncommon urge.

“Don’t say anything,” Evie replies, dry acid in her tone. It amuses Jacob even more but he abides, because if not for manners then for the way she looks, neck shiny with perspiration, goose bumps from the cold air. Evie comes forward and in a completely unexpected motion, squishes Jacob’s cheeks.

“You’ve such a chubby face,” she says, and it sounds like _I’m sorry, Jacob, for not doing anything, for leaving you to fight whatever the hell you’re fighting alone._

Jacob cups his hands on hers and drags them off his face. He touches the frayed end of her braid, resting on her right shoulder, and says, “You’re right about that,” which in the language of the Frye twins means, _It’s okay, I’m being stupid about this, I’ll be okay._

And that’s a load of bullshit, but it helps to hear from him nonetheless. Jacob walks to the edge of the cliff, leans against a tree, and gazes out at the torches below them, a mosaic of orange hues in the dreary village. He takes up only half the space of the tree. Evie comes next to him. Without words they search for each other’s hands, and Evie hopes that tomorrow, tomorrow when they have had a good night’s rest, they will speak words from a real language.

*

And they did. Evie might’ve been a little late, but here they are, the Frye twins. Both worn and weary, battered by the bludgeon of the world. But alive. Jacob completes his assignment with unusual seriousness and ziplines up the roof, next to her. They gaze at each other and Evie knows they were thinking the same things today, at the same time, mirror souls trapped in one vessel. Jacob swings her arm around her shoulders and she can’t help but smile, because people crumble and break, but there can still be beauty in the wreckage.


End file.
